Follow the Five Steps and gain some very important information that will dramatically improve your child’s ability to do well in school.
step 1 | step 2 | step 3 | step 4 | step 5

Step 1: Understand the Causes of Learning Problems.

The four reasons most commonly given to try and explain why children have difficulty learning include:

#1 A lack of instruction or poor instruction

If some tutoring and additional homework does not quickly solve the problem, this is not the cause of your child’s difficulties.

#2 A lack of motivation

Motivation is seldom the reason for difficulty when a child first starts school, but with continual struggle and failure, most children lose their motivation and start to avoid hard tasks. This avoidance then adds to learning problems.

#3 Heredity

Heredity does play a role in learning difficulties, but it is generally believed that between 40% and 70% of our mental abilities are learned, not inherited. Therefore, we can accomplish far more if we stop blaming the problems on genes, which we can’t change, and start helping enhance the skills that are learned and can be changed.

#4 A lack of underlying learning skills

If learning problems cannot quickly be resolved with a little extra tutoring, then usually there are deficiencies in the underlying learning skills required to make learning easy, efficient, and fast.

Step 2: Recognize the Skills Necessary for Fast and Efficient Learning.

What skills does your child need to develop to learn easily?

In the model below, the lower section is called the active processing system which represents what the mind is occupied with at any given time. The upper section represents additional mental skills that are available to be used and interact with any incoming information.

The active processing system includes attention and working memory (the ability to retain information until it is further analyzed). It is the work center. As incoming information is processed, other mental skills come into play and interact with it.

For example, long-term memory is used to compare incoming information with past experiences so that we can determine if it is new, old, or a modification of information we have stored in the past.

The degree to which all these individual mental skills are developed and the efficiency with which they work and integrate with each other factor heavily into the overall ability of the processing system to handle information accurately, quickly, and efficiently.

PLEASE NOTE: Studies point out that only 10 to 15 percent of learning difficulties are due to input or output problems and approximately 85-90 percent are due to poor processing skills. Let’s examine this system more closely.

How Deficient Skills Affect Specific Learning Tasks

Although our learning system is far more complex than I have described in this model, the model is helpful in describing how deficiencies in any of these skills will affect learning.

Attention: the ability to stay on a task for long periods of time or ignore distractions.

Working Memory: cannot retain information long enough to properly handle that information

Processing Speed: information may be lost before it can be used, requiring the student to start all over again.

Visual Processing: tasks that require seeing in your head (math word problems and comprehension).

Long-term Memory: wrong conclusions and answers will result.

Auditory Processing: sounding out words when reading or spelling will be very difficult.

Logic and Reasoning: problem solving, math, and comprehension will be poor.

Comprehension: making sense of new information will suffer.

It is also important to note that these skills do not work individually. Most work on every input, so the strength or weakness of one skill affects the effectiveness of other skills.

For example, reading comprehension is dependent on many skills including: the ability to create mental pictures and images, attend to what is read, and the fluidity of reading (which itself is dependent upon the auditory processing system).

Yes, learning is a complex process . . .

However, by evaluating these underlying mental skills, it is possible for us to determine the real causes of learning difficulties and what skills need to be improved to make learning far better.

Let's look at how we do that by looking first at testing and then at training.

Step 3: Find out What Skills are Weak.

Does your child have the skills needed to learn?

Intelligence (mental skills/cognition) tests measure the underlying learning skills the child has. If your child has been tested in the past or labeled as LD or dyslexic, please click here for a short but important discussion of these test results.

The “IQ” score is just an average of the separate mental skills being evaluated. It tells us nothing about the individual strengths and weaknesses of the underlying skills that would be important for reading, math calculations, comprehension, or geometry, etc. But, by analyzing the individual test scores and comparing them with the child’s achievement levels in different subject areas, we can determine a relationship between the underlying mental skills required and the achievement area affected.

For example, poor sound blending, segmenting, and analysis will result in difficulty in reading and spelling. When these underlying skills are developed, reading and spelling will improve. After testing has confirmed or pinpointed the underlying cause of a learning problem, the next step is to institute a program to correct the deficient learning skill.

Step 4: Learn What Needs to Happen to Improve Learning Skills.

What constitutes a successful learning skills training program? Drill and practice! Telling you how to play the piano will not make you a good pianist. Drill and practice will! Effective training must be one-on-one, structured in the same way as a video game consisting of many small steps and immediate feedback.

As a child progresses through procedures, tasks should be added to require greater attention. This forces new skills to become automatic. Because of this methodology, successful programs achieve maximum results in the shortest period of time, stretch abilities, make skills automatic, and build tremendous concentration.

Results of cognitive training have been outstanding. Students average over 3.6 years improvement in all deficient skills within 12 weeks! The testimonies we get from students and parents are inspiring.

Warning: This takes work!

To get these significant improvements requires hard work from the child and parents. Effective cognitive training requires at least six hours of intense training per week. Yes, big results require big effort!

Step 5: Take Specific Steps that Can Help Your Child or Student Gain the Skills Needed to Become Successful.

Let's apply what we have learned to your child. Here are six questions that we believe you should be able to answer before making any significant investment of time, money, or effort in helping your child with learning problems.

1. Does your child have difficulty learning?

2. Do these difficulties presently, or will they in the future, have a negative impact on your child's self-esteem, school advancement, parent-child relationship, vocational opportunities, friendships, attitude, etc?

3. Does it appear that the major cause may be deficient underlying learning skills? (This will may require testing to confirm.)

4. Is it reasonable to assume that if the deficient skills were improved, that learning would be faster, easier, and more efficient?

5. Does working one-on-one with intensity and feedback to achieve large, fast results make sense to you? (To answer this better, click the link below to view a free online video.)

Here is your first step to giving you child’s effective learning skills!

Contact us at +65 7643360 or +65 62884123 or email us at info@brain.com.sg for an One-to-One Assessment conducted by one of our Certified Trainers. The assessment includes a wide battery of tests and evaluations designed to measure the strengths and weaknesses of your child's learning skills. Based on the results, our trainer will recommend an appropriate curriculum that will enhance your child's foundational learning skills.

NewsBytes

• Special Education (SPED) Schools are now in full swing.

SPED schools are a MOE initiative to build a more 'inclusive' society.

Besides being an economic powerhouse, the all-important barometer of a nation's success lies in its graciousness and its ability to narrow the income gap between the have's and the have nots. As such, SPED schools play an important part in ensuring that kids who need that extra assistance in their learning are not readily and unfairly labelled as 'slow' learners and put on a reduced curriculum; when these kids, with that extra little help, will be as capable as any mainstream students. Indeed, often times, it is the care and concern of a Special Education Officers (SEOs) that removes the fear of learning due to their constant failures in understanding the lessons that put them on a path of success.

As Mrs Mary Neo, a SEO said, “I still remembered this father whose child was dyslexic who returned to thank me long after the child has graduated from primary school. He was grateful that his daughter was accorded a place in the mainstream school like all her other friends”

The stigma and damage done to a child's psyche could be more than we can ever imagine. To quote from Mr Alex Flemming, Director of Research in Early Education, 'our system is capable of mishandling a child if he or she is relegated to a lower-level stream (of learning) because a psychologist' report said so without proper intervention.'

Indeed, here at SBDC, we offer the unadulterated advice based on our scientific results, namely the Gibson Cognitive Test Report (GCTB) to provide the best training for a child's learning needs. Because in SBDC, we do not believe any child is learning disabled, just UNable to learn for reasons that are too many; ranging from emotional instability in families, absent parents due to excessive work commitments to a lack of training in basic phonics in early education that impedes reading abilities.

To think that anyone can readily pinpoint a child's inability to learn as a Learning DISability vis-a-vis a person who's visually disabled is hedging that on all possible explanations, only one is acceptable. This thinking is clearly archaic at best and at worst, criminal, given the current scientific advancements in the understanding of the human mind.

• Spatial Processing as an important skill

From our latest research in our consultation with our partners, Spatial Processing (or Visual Processing as some would call it) is a fundamental skill of learning. Spatial Processing is the ability to discern objects, pictures, people around us and to store for retrieval in our memory when it is needed later. It cuts across all aspects of life; whether you are a student, a construction worker, a businessman, a sportsman or a mother, the ability to visually process (much like the best cameras in the market, except better) has tremendous implications. Imagine that you can recognize the faces of the people you come across and attach meanings to it so that you can remember their names. Or that you can visually process at lightning speed, what is immediately happening around you and act accordingly. For top performers like air force pilots, this ability or the lack thereof, directly impacts the success of flight missions.

As such, the games that we let our children play must build this ability at a young age.

Whether it is make-believe games, cooking (masak-masak), lego, these games involve the manipulation of disparate objects in space, combining for some intended purpose, with an element of fun, that adds to a child's visual processing speed and memory. Playing for a child is truly learning in this case.

Edu Newsbytes

Character Education is now getting increasing emphasis.

This is in-line with the MOE’s vision of holistic training and the push towards instilling life-long values in our children. You see more character training companies now in the market gaining increasing acceptance.

• More Financial goodies for needy families

The setting up of ‘Opportunity Fund’ gives schools an extra source of funds to tap into over and above what they are normally given in a financial year. This funding, to the tune of $118,000 to $150,000, the deciding factor being whether it is a neighborhood, autonomous or independent school, levels up enrichment courses available for needy students. They may range from training of communication skills, problem-solving skills to subsidized trips to Asian countries for educational exchange.

• Non-native Mother Tongue is REALLY now happening

Now we have another set of ‘Hanyu Pinyin’ to learn. With all the challenges faced by parents and educators in helping our children gain competency in their mother tongues, it remains to be seen this is going to be implemented without overly taxing the students. Obviously, one criteria for admission would be a qualified mother tongue practitioner. Implementation starts this year in 2007.

• Tuition business grows by the year, year after year

You see them sprouting them up like mushrooms in marketplace, shopping malls and neighborhood centers. It is a multi-million dollar business in Singapore. With all that is being spent to give our children that extra edge, the simple rule of thumb when choosing a private tutor is 1) qualification 2) verifiable experience and 3) your child’s feedback, the last one being of paramount importance. Horror stories abound of how tutors nanny their way through their monthly paychecks instead of supplementing academic knowledge.